2013 CEV European League - 13/06

Quote from Bartek

David beat Goliat today.

Montenegro is great team with serious players and great coach. No surprise today.

I watched part of last week's game between Montenegro and Spain
because Ruiz was in the starting line-up in sets 3 and 4 and he had remarkable stats:
- 10/14 in attack (remember, the guy measures 1.78 m).

It's a real treat watching him jump as high as he does or outsmart the block if necessary.
He even scores a solo kill-block in the 4th set.

Off course, Villena is pretty impressive as well. There's something really familiar about these Spanish opposites:
Pascual, G. Falasca, Barcala, Villena - they all share a style in attack that is very similar.

Most remarkable fact about Belgium's last 2 games:
Tomas Rousseaux (1994) made his debut in the senior national team and was impressive in attack in both games.
This means we have an additional option for the position of outside hitter, which is very welcome.
I expect Francois Lecat to join the selection in 1 or 2 years as well.

And I can't stress enough the importance of Simon Van de Voorde for our team:
he's playing at a very consistent level in block and attack throughout this campaign (WC qualifications, EC qualifier against Greece and Euro League).

Hope to see Valkiers and Van Walle play in tommorow's game against Slovakia.

By the way, I totally dislike this 21-point system.
Teams do barely 2 complete rotations per set, this is ridiculous.
In the classic system (15 points, no scoring on side-outs), teams easily did 5 or 6 rotations per set (which was probably a bit too much).
25 points system is fine as it is.

Don't let some bonehead marketeers reduce our sport to fill the gaps between commercials.

I hope this stupid system can die quietly after this European League.

Quote from Richard

By the way, I totally dislike this 21-point system.
Teams do barely 2 complete rotations per set, this is ridiculous.
In the classic system (15 points, no scoring on side-outs), teams easily did 5 or 6 rotations per set (which was probably a bit too much).
25 points system is fine as it is.

Don't let some bonehead marketeers reduce our sport to fill the gaps between commercials.

I hope this stupid system can die quietly after this European League.

They said they reduce the technical timeouts to one per set to get less overall match time, but this way they lose advertisement time, which was the plain idea of having two TTOs till now. Also, why can televisions broadcast a 3, 4 or 5-hour-long tennis match, but have problems streaming volleyball for a bit more than 2 hours? FIVB should realize constant change deludes people, especially the ones less interested in the game who only watch from time to time. How would they involve more new volleyball followers when they keep changing the rules? The rally-point system was a huge success, no one denies that even if there must have been controversial opinions when it was first suggested. However, when there is some growth in popularity you just don't change it often, otherwise you risk losing neutral spectators. They don't have to be worreid about volleyball enthusiasts, we will probably always follow the game's trends (unless they introduce something remarkably stupid), but you have to think about how the game is perceived and how easy it would be to learn the rules, not just be in servitude to TV. You achieve a negative effect by introducing a new test system every year for a tournament.

This being said, I totally agree with you. I am sick and tired of Golden Rules, 21 points, Golden Sets, reception technique changes and all the other bullsh**. I am even in favour of keeping 2 TTOs because you give a chance to the losing team to get back in the set. Look at the set scores with a single TTO, e.g. 21-11, 21-14 and so on. OK, teams are weak in the European League, agree, but you got my point.

21-point system is tragic and total disaster. Hope this wont become official rule

Quote from Kaziyski

21-point system is tragic and total disaster. Hope this wont become official rule

You wish. Graca, as a president of CBV wants both Brazilian leagues to play on these rules since 2013/2014 season. If it's gonna go like that we can be sure it will become official.

What worries me about this 21-point rule: there's no controversy or debate at all (as far as I know).
I can't imagine all coaches and players simply agreeing with this rule change - but I'm not reading or hearing a single line of protest.

Quote from Richard

Hope to see Valkiers and Van Walle play in tommorow's game against Slovakia.

Finally, Valkiers and Van Walle got some playing time against Slovakia and they did great:
Van Walle scored 13/18 in 2 short sets.
Hope to see more of that in the remaining EL matches.

With this fuc..ng 21pts rule, u will never see sets, when Teams are coming back, if they are behind in the set with for example. 20:15 or 19:13...So the set is mostly over, no time for coming backs

Witnessed Belgium - Slovakia game live in Antwerp.

I'm not sure why this Slovakian team has such a tough time winning games.
They have some great individual talent: most notably opposite Bencz and setter Zatko. Piovarci had a great game and Patak is a great all-round player.
The Slovakians dominated the game in serving, blocking and serve reception.
Nevertheless, they fall apart by the end of the set.

Deroo had a great game (15/24 63% in attack - 1 single error).
I liked Valkiers' setting - was unfortunate in serve though.
Van den Dries seemed tired - lot of errors and blocked attacks (scored 12/28 - 43%).
He was great a few weeks ago in WC qualification against Romania and EC qualification against Greece.
He played almost all games in EL up to now: once again, it's time to give Van Walle finally some playing time.

My opinion about Zatko is a bit different. I think he is good for the EL level, but nothing more than that. Masny and Skladany are the duo to get Slovakia going.

What's decisive in a case of tie? H2H, set ratio or point ratio?

EDIT: decisive is number of won matches

Belgium managed to score 12 wins in a row - which is great.
I was glad to see a starting line-up in the final weekend without 4 key players (Depestele - Deroo - Verhees - Vandevoorde), dominating all other opponents.
Slovakia, Austria and Denmark used more or less the same starting line-up throughout this EL campaign and it is clear that all of these teams suffer from fatigue and a lack of substition options.

It's time to see Belgium take on some stronger opponents now.
Curious how Belgium will perform in the final round against Turkey, Czec Rep and Croatia.

So in F4 are Turkey (host), Belgium, Czech Republic and Croatia. Today results doesn't influence pool standings.

Best players according to stats:
Scorer: Ivan Raic (CRO)
Blocker per set: Siarhei Busel (BLR) (per efficiency: Jozsef Nagy (HUN))
Receiver: Danijel Galic (CRO) (in both categories)
Server per set: Tsimafei Zhukouski (CRO) (per efficiency: Murat Yenipazar (TUR))
Spiker per set: Ivan Raic (CRO) (per efficiency and per %: Ger Van Valle (BEL))
Setter: Stijn D'Hulst (BEL) - not really reliable, because he played only in 3 matches

I won't follow this, so I can't judge who can be in dream team (best line-up).

Galić played only on 1st tournament so...

Croatia made great, huge result. After missings of Omrčen, Sikirić, Kovačević, Vulin, Ćuk, Mihalj later we lost Galić, Zimakijević while Colić refused NT call. So we made it to FF with C squad

Croatia in EL finals with C squad